


Revolution

by wishful_stargazer



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Eventual Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, Gen, International Fanworks Day 2021, Main Characters Appear as Minor Characters, Redemption, Some Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-12 01:41:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29127375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wishful_stargazer/pseuds/wishful_stargazer
Summary: The boys of Sunset Curve are dead...by hot dog, and the hot dog vendor, Sam,  who was so good-natured about the pickle juice in his trunk is devastated by it...so much so that it changes the course of his life.
Comments: 21
Kudos: 31





	1. A Hard Day's Night

**Author's Note:**

> This work is dedicated to reddit user UnsaidIvy who started the thread that spawned the idea and then said I could write it. All the <3s. Hope you like it.
> 
> I am a glutton for comments. If you like or dislike something, I'd love to hear about it!
> 
> Sam's favorite band is the Beatles. The title of this story is Revolution, from the Beatles song of the same name, and each chapter is also titled with an appropriate Beatles song.
> 
> Sorry if you're a Gin Blossoms fan like Ella. They broke up too early and their oeuvre doesn't give me enough to pull from. :-)

**1995**

The first inkling Sam had that there was a problem were the sirens.

He was grilling his weiners, humming “When I’m 64,” by the Beatles under his breath, and worrying about his youngest daughter’s sniffles when he heard them screaming through the neighborhood. He turned around quickly and tried to spot the source of the racket. Fire? Police? 

No. Ambulance. It was just rounding the corner. 

Sam hated to see that. He always felt as though he should be doing something about it. But being a licensed physician in Mexico meant nothing north of the border. Here, trying to put his expertise into practice and save lives would actually get him arrested. Maybe even deported. “Ella, do you know why the ambulance is here?” he asked.

Ella didn’t turn around, just kept bobbing her head and counting the ones in the cashbox. Spying the DiscMan at her hip, he knew why. He reached out with his tongs and gave her a gentle poke. 

She lifted the earphones, and the tinny, flat sound of the Gin Blossoms yelling “Hey Jealousy” spilled into the night. Sam shook his head. He loved his wife, but she had no taste.

“Would you check on that ambulance?” he pointed. “See if you can find out what’s going on there?”

She rolled her eyes, but then smiled at him lovingly and patted his hand. She understood his inner conflicts. She knew him very, very well. He blew her a kiss and spun another dog on the grill.

*****

“Mi amor!” 

Sam smiled and turned around toward his wife. After one glance, though, he set down the bag of hot dog buns he had been preparing to open and took both of her hands in his. “What is wrong, mi vida?” He gasped and started rubbing her palms. “Your hands are like ice!”

“The boys...from the band. They are sick. They took them away in the ambulance!” 

“Wait, the teenagers?” Sam’s head spun. The four kids were regular customers...so frequently that he had more than once asked Ella what their parents were thinking, letting them be out so often, so late, and on so many school nights. And even though they were young and good customers, he was also aware that growing boys needed more than a steady hot dog diet.

“Yes, the three that ate here tonight...they are all vomiting and can’t stand up.”

“Oh Dios mio!” Sam said. “We must close down and go to the hospital. They will need to test everything the boys ate tonight.”

Ella nodded, but with a little hesitation. “What if…”

“It will be fine,” he assured her. “I may not be a doctor in this country, but I know how to grill a safe hot dog!”

*****

The kids were dead. And not one of them was even eighteen years old. They were younger than his eldest daughter. Ella was clutching her cross while weeping, and Sam was seated next to her in the emergency room, caressing her hand while he tried to process the information. They should not have died like this. They should have played their music and stayed out too late and drank too many sodas and rotted their teeth and met girls (or boys, because you never know) as wonderful as his Ella. In short, led long lives, doing some smart things and many, many stupid ones, because that is the fate of teenagers everywhere.

And instead they were lying cold in the hospital morgue.

“Mr. Aguirre,” the white coated physician came into the waiting room. Next to him was a police officer. “Would you come with us please?”

Ella looked up at the two men, and an expression of pure terror crossed her face. She clung fiercely to his hand.

“It will be fine, mi vida,” he whispered, and stepped into the hallway.


	2. And I Love Her

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam can not continue as a hot dog vendor after the death of the boys. His wife decides to take matters into her own hands.

“Mr. Aguirre, the DA is dismissing the charges. You are free to go.” The baby-faced public defender smiled at Sam and held out his right hand for a shake. “It’s over, and I’m so sorry that you and your family had to go through this.”

Sam closed his eyes and sent a quick prayer of gratitude upward before grasping the younger man’s hand. “I don’t know what we would have done without you for these three weeks,” he said gratefully. “You have been so much more than an attorney to us. More like an angel.”

Patrick shook his head. “All I did was my job--try to get us the truth and the best information available as fast as possible.”

Weeks after Sam had been charged with involuntary manslaughter, the CDC had finally traced the contamination of the hot dogs--to a manufacturing facility just south of Omaha, and had determined that it had nothing to do with Sam’s preparation or presentation of the “perros calientes.” It was definitely a relief that he was not going to jail, but the guilt of knowing that he had sold the boys their deadly last meal…

Sam had tried to hide it from Ella and their daughters, but somehow they knew. Without even speaking to her husband about it, Ella had terminated their relationship with their suppliers, and started preparing and selling her mother’s homemade tamales instead.

As it happened, they were a huge hit. So huge that their daughter Rosa Veronica, who had always loved preparing food with her mother, was now insisting that she didn’t want college, she wanted to make tamales, chile rellenos, and elote. She persuaded her mother to offer melons sprinkled with powdered chile as a side. Sam was stunned as their income doubled, then proceeded to double again.

If only they had done it before those boys were killed.

“Mi corazon,” Sam told his wife that night as he counted up their receipts. “You are making us rich.”

“Good,” she said, “because I found a vendor that will sell us some used restaurant equipment and let us lease a commercial kitchen on credit. From now on,” she eyed him severely, “we are going to be legal, not just in our green cards, but in our business, too. We’re going to leave a legacy for our niñas.”

“As you wish,” Sam readily agreed.

“And you, mi amor,” she continued. “We don’t need. The girls and I can manage alone. You are not a chef.”

“Ella-”

“You, mi esposo, are going back to school.”

“Ella, I’m 46 years old. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“We always said you would get your medical certification as soon as we could manage it.”

“That was over fifteen years ago, when we first came to this country.”

“And you will be working at least twenty more. You were not born to stuff tamales, you are a healer,” she continued. “And as your wife, I am going to make this happen.”

*****

They had looked into it over the years, of course. The prospect was daunting. First he had to be completely fluent in English. Fortunately that was one issue time had taken care of for him. He could not only speak it now, he could think in it. Dream in it. Still, the sheer number of classes he would need. To qualify as a physician in his home country, almost all the coursework involved treating people and their diseases. U.S. medical colleges required years of courses only barely related to medicine: organic chemistry, for example. He would need to study all of those subjects to pass the initial two exams, then complete a three-year residency. And meanwhile his wife and daughters would be the sole support of the family.

“Ella, I--” he started to object.

“Mi amor, when have you ever not given me whatever I wanted?” she asked, cupping his left cheek with her right hand. “Including moving me, my pregnant belly, our three year old daughter, and two noisy chihuahuas to the United States? Let me do this for you.”

Overwhelmed with love, Sam wrapped his arms around his wife. “Te amo, mi corazon, mi vida, mi esposa. Te amaré por siempre.”


	3. Doctor Robert

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dr. Samuel Aguirre has completed his residency and is ready to hunt for work...but an old acquaintance has other ideas.

**2001**

Dr. Samuel Aguirre stepped back and watched his son climb one ladder while rock legend Trevor Wilson ascended another to help hang the clinic sign. The wobble of his son's ladder, though, quickly had him racing forward again

“It’s fine, Dad,” Toñito said, rolling his eyes as he adjusted the neon logo. “Stop worrying.”

“Just making sure that you don’t become my first patient!” Sam retorted, as he steadied the wooden frame. He looked up at Trevor. “You be careful, too. I don’t think our liability limits are high enough to cover it if you hurt your guitar hand!”

He meant it as a joke, but Trevor’s eyes darkened momentarily before he smiled down at Sam. “I’ll keep that in mind. So much for my dreams of early retirement!”

*********

Five years ago, back when Trevor still went by Bobby and Sam had just been cleared of complicity in the hot dog tragedy, they had seen each other at the funeral for one of the boys...the one Sam had learned was named Lucas. Neither of them had approached any of the family members or the casket. They both hung back, on the outside looking in, tears trailing silently down their faces in parallel. Sam recognized him as the last boy of the foursome, the one who had been left alive. As a father himself, he could not ignore the boy’s tortured face. “May I buy you a coffee?” he asked hesitantly after the service.

The cup of coffee ended up lasting almost three hours, as they jointly rehashed all the might-have-beens they both lived with every day. Sam learned to his surprise that Lucas Patterson had run away from home several months before his death. Bobby had been hiding him in the family garage, which doubled as a place for their band to rehearse. 

“I keep thinking, you know, if I hadn’t let him stay, he would have had to go home to his parents. They might have made him quit the band and then he’d...THEY’D all be alive. Or she might have had us over for dinner before the performance. Or...just...anything…”Bobby’s voice trailed off and he choked, as though he couldn’t quite swallow or breathe.

“Son,” Sam said, wishing for the presence of Ella and her warm, mothering spirit that always made things brighter, “son, we have no way of knowing what could have happened. What if you didn’t give him a place to sleep? He might not have gone home..he could have been living on the streets. So many terrible things could have happened to him--”

“He was seventeen!” Bobby interrupted fiercely. “Did you know that? He wasn’t even old enough to get inside most of the places we were playing, but he was so charming and talented he talked our way in. Alex and I were going to get him a Sunset Curve tattoo next month when he had his birthday, and then we were all going to get matching ones, and...and…”

“I know. I know. It is not fair. It is not right. Do you know how many times I asked myself why I didn’t try one of my own hot dogs that night? Then I would have been in the emergency room and my customers would have all been safe! I am sorry, Bobby, but the Lord in His wisdom only lets us live forward. You, you have to move forward. Your friends would not want you to hurt like this for always.”

“And you?” Bobby asked bitterly. “Are you just moving forward? Selling more hot dogs that murder people?” His face changed. He was a nice kid. He would never be intentionally cruel. “I’m so sorry, I don’t--I don’t know how I could say such a thing to you--”

Sam took a sip of his coffee and inhaled the cinnamon he’d sprinkled on top, letting the warmth of the spice refresh his spirit, which had died a little bit more at Bobby’s accusation. He met the boy’s eyes frankly and addressed him as he would another adult. “No, Roberto, I am not. My hot dog career ended the night your friends died. My wife is making tamales now and I am going back to school. In Mexico I was a physician and I am hoping to be able to qualify in this country. I want to heal teenagers, not hurt them.”

Bobby nodded quietly, stared down at the table, and surreptitiously wiped his eyes. “I hope you do.”

“Nothing can bring them back. But I hope I can help enough kids...not to make up for their lives, but to feel like I have done something worthwhile with my own.”

And now, it was happening. Bobby had changed his name to Trevor Wilson and gone on to have a huge musical career. He and Sam had exchanged many, many emails over the years, much to the admiration of Sam’s daughters and son. A few times, Bobby had even called late at night when the survivor’s guilt was getting to be too much to bear. Sam was always glad to assure him that he was a good person who deserved to be happy.

No one was more surprised than Sam when he emailed Bobby that he would be finishing his residency in six months and was looking into clinical placements...and Bobby responded with a check.

For two and a half million dollars. Along with a list of A-listers Bobby knew who might be open to becoming donors or sponsoring fundraisers, two charitably-minded surgeons that made it a habit to perform necessary procedures at no or reduced costs, a holistic practitioner, and resumes from a local nurse’s college. Two years, three benefit concerts, and thousands of hours of work and planning later, the Luke Patterson Memorial Free Clinic was finally opening its doors. Its mission was providing health care for the uninsured, the homeless, and the runaways. For some street kids, this was going to mean a heartbreaking focus on sexual health as far too many runaways were still ending up as exploited children, but Sam, Toñito (an R.N.) and his daughter Gloria (pediatrics) were ready for the challenge. His fourth daughter, Maria Elena, still had a lot of years to go in her obstetrician specialty, but she hoped to join them half-time when she was complete. Ella, Rosa Veronica, and Maria Luisa (Maria Elena’s twin) were still happily selling Mexican street food...feeding the apparently insatiable appetites of Angelenos for authentic flavors.

“It’s a good day,” he called up to his son Toñito, and the son of his heart, Bobby/Trevor.

“Yes, yes it sure is.” Bobby’s real smile, not the one he plastered on for his fans, but the genuine, cheek-splitting smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes and showed all his teeth, gleamed for a moment in the late afternoon sunshine.


	4. A Day In The Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eleven years into the clinic's existence, we see some of its impact.

**2012**

“Jade, I need you to push now,” Maria Elena bent over the young teenager struggling to bring her baby into the world. “I know you’re tired, but you can do this, honey.”

Jade had just turned eleven when her parents had paid a family friend to smuggle her out of their tiny Vietnamese community and into the U.S. He betrayed their trust-- holding her hostage in a house with four other girls and forcing her into sex work. By the time the fifteen year old had escaped and found her way to the clinic, she was already pregnant. The LA police department had been only too eager to rescue the other girls and lock their abuser away for a very, very long time. Jade herself had been given the option of asylum in the U.S. or a return home. 

Maria Elena had held the young girl in her arms as Jade had cried and explained that she couldn’t go back now. Unwed and pregnant, she would be a financial burden and a source of shame to her family, which lived in a very traditional district. The only way she would be accepted would be to abort the baby...and Jade didn’t want that. She wanted her son or daughter.

So Jade Pham moved into the household and Ella Aguirre promptly declared her the fifth daughter that she had always hoped for. Jade enrolled in high school and learned to grill corn on the cob and crumble the cotija cheese they served on it. 

And soon she would be a mother...possibly on her own sixteenth birthday, if her baby decided to make an appearance in the next twenty minutes.

*********

It took forty-five, so young Samuel Pham would not share his mother’s birthday, but would have his own on the next day. Jade, pale with exhaustion, her hair hanging limply around her shoulders, still seemed to glow with happiness as she tickled her son and counted his toes for what had to be the fifth time.

“He is so very, very perfect,” she mumbled, as she drifted off to sleep, baby still in her arms.

“Another namesake for you, papá,” Maria Elena fondly informed her father when he came by to check on the mother and son, both still soundly asleep.

“So many Samuels, but no Trevors or Bobbys, and only a few Lukes,” her dad said, shaking his head. 

“Well, to name them after Trevor, the mothers would have to know he’s involved,” she pointed out in response. “Exactly what he’s always trying to avoid.” 

Sam shrugged. Although he felt the honor every time another young mother gave her son his name, when he could, he preferred to steer them toward Alexander, Reginald, or Lucas. It felt like the very least he could do for the three boys who had died so young. In his mind’s eye, he called up the images that adorned the clinic’s walls. Luke: the dreamer, according to Bobby, with his sleeveless band tee, his messy hair, and knowing hazel eyes. Alex: the tall blue-eyed blond, who was always so nervous and kind. Reggie: the green-eyed flirt with the perfect spill of coffee-colored hair and the habit of speaking without thinking things through, but the purest of hearts. Sam felt like he knew them all through Bobby’s memories and stories. They lived so vividly in his mind, and he tried to keep them alive by telling his young patients their story. Some of them, the ones who were lucky enough to have come from good homes, took Luke’s story to heart and asked Sam to help them get back to their parents. No matter how far they had come, Bobby, as the clinic’s chief benefactor, would always make sure any child that requested to go home would be able to do so. 

Those that were less lucky...some they had been able to save, and some were lost to the streets, to gangs, to addiction. Some nights Ella brought them pots and pots of coffee, listening to her husband, son, and daughters grieve over someone they’d grown close to but ultimately proved unable to rescue. 

“There’s nothing easy about this job, mi corazon,” he had told her once.

Her black eyes shone with love, and she smoothed his hair out of his eyes. He could feel the tiny burn scars sprinkling over her fingers and palms and smell the Ivory soap she insisted upon. “Would you wish it easier, if it was within your power to do so?” she had asked. “Or would you keep it hard, and meaningful, and save not only bodies, but hearts and souls?”

So much wisdom and grace, and somehow she had passed it all on to their five children. Sam could never understand why he had been singled out for so many blessings, but he vowed to never under any circumstances, take any of it for granted.


	5. Across The Universe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's time for Sam to retire, and life has been good to him. He has love, family, success, and friendship. Still, though, the night of the tragedy lingers in his mind.

**2020**

Sam stared out into the ocean waves. He slipped his feet out of his sandals and dug his toes into the shore, relishing the dual sensations of damp sand between his toes and fresh wind sweeping over his face and hair. He smiled briefly, appreciating that he still HAD some hair at the grand age of seventy. His father and brother had both gone bald early, but Sam’s hair, though greatly thinned out on top and now white instead of black, stubbornly persisted. 

Behind him he heard the laughter and screams of his grandkids, the music from the streaming his kids had set up, and he smelled the food grilling. The whole family was aware of his aversion to hot dogs, sausages, bratwursts, and pretty much any kind of mystery meat on a bun. So when he requested they rent a picnic shelter on the beach instead of having some catered meal indoors, his foster daughter, Jade, had accused him of being “intentionally difficult.” 

But she laughed when she said it, the joyful laughter that was so wonderful to hear, the kind that had started bubbling up out of her spontaneously around young Sammy’s second birthday. Ella had suggested that they just bring a food truck to the beach with them, but Jade and Rosa Veronica had quickly vetoed that idea.

“Mamá,” Rosa had cried in exasperation. “If we bring a truck you will spend all your time supervising and worrying. This is a celebration for you, too.”

Ella attempted to argue, only to get tossed out of the planning entirely. Their son, daughters, and oldest grandkids banished her from the meetings and refused to share any details...even what they were spending on the party.

Ella had worried about that like a dog gnawing at a bone. Sam tried to assure her that their family consisting of doctors and nurses, chefs operating a virtual fleet of food trucks, an Emmy winning actress in Jade, and a multi-millionaire poker player in Rosa Veronica’s husband was not going to be bankrupted by a party. But she could not relax.

Not until the day Bobby/Trevor showed up at her door and informed her that as the donor behind the clinic Sam was retiring from, HE would be funding the party and all the festivities and he would take it as terribly rude and ungrateful if anyone objected.

Sam thought it was hilarious that Trevor had helicoptered in to avoid LA county traffic, and poked no small amount of fun at Trevor’s face on the whirlybird and Trevor’s thousand dollar sunglasses, but Trevor just laughed, poked fun right back at Sam’s white hair and red cowboy boots, and insisted on flying Ella over the city to enjoy the sunset.

Now Trevor was flirting outrageously with Rosa Veronica, and Rosa’s husband was being remarkably tolerant of the rock star’s open admiration of his wife. Meanwhile, Trevor’s teenage daughter Carrie was building a sandcastle with Sammy, who would be turning nine in a few weeks, right after his mother turned twenty-five.

Life was good. 

Still as he sat in the wind, enjoying the aromas of grilled shrimp and halibut, lamb and vegetable skewers, and the salty sea air, his thoughts turned to the boys.

They would be in their forties now. Would they have been stars like Trevor? Would the band have hit big? Broken up? Would they have been parents? Would their children have been as beautiful and bright as Trevor’s Carrie or Jade’s Sammy? 

“Mi amor,” he heard Ella’s voice behind him and felt her hand on his shoulder as she lowered herself, with some difficulty, down onto the sand next to him. “These bones,” she grumbled. “You will have to haul me up with a forklift when it’s time to leave.”

He turned his head and dropped a light kiss on her fingertips. “Mi corazon, I will sweep you up and carry you to the car just as if it was our wedding day all over again.”

Ella snorted. “You are no longer nineteen, and I am hardly my slim sixteen year old self. I am not paying for back surgery because you think you are Rhett Butler.”

“No, you are not sixteen,” he said, the words bubbling up out of his heart. “You were never this beautiful at sixteen, and I never could have loved you this much at nineteen.”

Her face glowed, and she gestured behind her...at the hundred and fifty people of all ages that had come to celebrate his retirement. “Look at them, mi esposo. Look at what we did. Look at what we made. More beautiful than this ocean.”

“We have been so fully blessed,” he agreed. “But, still, sometimes I wonder, why me, and not them? Why do I get to live and thrive and grow old and hold my grandchildren and they are pictures on a wall, frozen in time, never to grow any older?”

“If I had the answer I would tell you. Some things we can’t know, being only human beings,” she sighed. “But look at all the lives you and Trevor have saved and transformed. All the people who have been rescued and healed and comforted and restored. Would any of it have happened without their deaths?”

“Perhaps not,” he admitted, “but what a terrible price to be paid.”

“Grandpa!” Sammy ran over excitedly. “Come see Carrie’s band!” 

“Don’t get up, Uncle Sam,” Carrie called. “I’ll come to you!”

“You’re in a band, ajihada?” Sam asked his goddaughter.

“Yes, we’re called Dirty Candy.” She tapped on a small electronic tablet a few times, then handed it over to him. He found himself nodding his head in time. It was catchy. He liked it.

“You are good, sweetheart,” Ella confirmed while Sam watched them dance. Such a young lady Carrie had turned into. Pretty soon she would be heading to college. And Sam felt a brief pang for his old friend Bobby who would soon be alone again.

The video ended, and Sam started to hand the device back to Carrie when another video started playing. Assuming this was more Dirty Candy, he glanced back down at the screen. 

And stared, transfixed.

Playing guitars, bass, and drums were three teenaged boys whose faces he knew as well as he knew his own. In front of them a stunningly magnetic young Latina spun around and sang.

_ I believe,  _

_ I believe that we’re just one dream _

_ Away from who we’re meant to be _

_ That we’re standing on the edge of  _

_ Something big, something crazy _

_ Our best days as yet unknown, _

_ That this moment is ours to own _

_ ‘Cause we’re standing on the edge of great. _

“Carrie,” he asked when he had recovered the power of speech. “Do you know these people?”

“Oh, sure, that’s Julie Molina. She has a band with those guys. They’re pretty good. Dad and I saw them play at the Orpheum a couple of nights ago. I think Dad is trying to track them down or something?” She shrugged. “I don’t know. But Julie totally withdrew into herself after her mom died and didn’t sing anything for a year. Then these strange boys appear and suddenly she’s all about music again and they’re completely huge on youtube.” She made a face. “I’m trying to be a big enough person to be happy for her, but I wish Dirty Candy would take off like that.”

“You have nothing to worry about,” Ella assured her. “It’s not a competition and you girls sounded amazing.”

Sam continued to stare. And then the camera zoomed in on the lead guitarist.

_ We all make mistakes _

_ But they’re just stepping stones _

_ To take us where we wanna go _

_ It’s never straight, no.  _

There could be no doubt. Lucas “Luke” Patterson was singing his heart out. All about mistakes. Second chances. And now this girl Julie was harmonizing with him.

_ Sometimes we gotta lean _

_ Lean on someone else _

_ To get a little help _

_ Until we find our way… _

The tears just overflowed. “Uncle Sam, what is wrong?” Carrie asked, alarmed.

“Nothing, nothing at all, princesa,” he answered. “Everything is right. Everything is perfect.”

_ Shout, shout _

_ C'mon and let it out, out _

_ Don't gotta hide it _

_ Let your colors blind their eyes _

_ Be who you are, no compromise _

Sam finally lifted his eyes from the video. “Impossible,” he started to say to Ella.

She put a finger against his lips, silencing him. “So little faith, mi amor?” and she softly quoted the lyric. “Something big , something crazy, our best days are yet unknown…”

And Sam felt the last shadow lift from his burdened heart. He didn’t need to know how. He didn’t need to understand. God was letting him know that he had a plan for these boys, too. And it was going to be 

Great.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's Sam's story! I hope you enjoyed getting to know him. I certainly did. He was one of the characters that once I started asking questions about him, he just stepped right up to tell his story. Thank you for following along, and please let me know what you think!


End file.
